Andrew Collins (I)

Canned laughter doesn't exist, so why complain about it

Count Arthur Strong has been criticised for using so-called canned laughter, but what does that actually mean? Graham Linehan and Steve Coogan explain the 'studio sitcom'.

Steve Coogan: Alan Partridge is becoming more like me

"If Alan was a real person, I'd probably just hate him, but there's enough humanity in him for me to have empathy"

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - review

"Alpha Papa plays to its enduring two strengths: Coogan's powerhouse performance, which has never stopped evolving with the times, and funny lines," says Andrew Collins.

Andrew Collins: Being a script editor

Pre-show nerves? Pah. I didn't write it. I'm the script editor, says Andrew Collins.

Enjoy this Tripp

I'm hooked on daily re-runs of Man About The House on [y]ITV3[/y].

Andrew Collins interview

An interview with writer Andrew Collins. Note: this link opens up an interactive magazine page.

Andrew Collins blog - Gates open

People often ask me what it takes to write for TV. I'll tell you: patience. Actually, patience and perseverance. It was in December 2009 that I was first approached by the exec producer of what would eventually become Gates.

Something in the water

It's brilliant. It's recognisably a British take on suburban, middle-class manners and media exploitation, and the familiar if unusually-cast faces of Chris Langham and Simon Amstell also give you something to go on, but Black Pond is not your average film.

I am still a little worried that Harvey Easter, the indefatigably cheery protaganist of Mr Blue Sky, will someday soon rip the mask of optimism from his face and go on a killing rampage, starting with his live-in son-in-law-to-be. As this young man, a grimestep DJ who is paid in energy drinks and therefore returns to the Easter household at 5am on a Red Bull high, is called Kill-R, it will give Harvey the opportunity to snarl: "Who's the killer now?" as he takes aim.

When I reviewed last year's first series of Andrew Collins' slow-burning hit comedy, I thought Harvey was bound to 'reverse into gloom' at some stage. The second series opened with his entire family kidnapped and replaced almost wholesale by the cast of TV's Outnumbered, but plucky old Harvey just got on with the job of being happy.

So Mark Benton's Harvey, a performance which is an essay in finely nuanced felicity (and how much harder must this be to play than the sobs of a broken man?) didn't falter even though the detached irony of Rebecca Front, last year's Mrs E, was replaced by Claire Skinner bringing with her Tyger Drew-Honey, both from Outnumbered. Skinner is the leading exponent of wringing comedic value out of the middle-class mum, determined never to yell "Because I said so." And I'm sure I'll get used to her in this, but for now I can't imagine her without chiselled-jawed, puppy-eyed Hugh Dennis as the husband who is a perpetual disappointment.

Tyger took over the role of 16-year-old Robbie with aplomb, asking for money to buy fruit - street slang for drugs - while their older child and bride-to-be, Charlie, was played by Rosamund Hanson with a quirkiness heightened by what was either a speech impediment or a plethora of tongue piercings. The darkness in this solidly engineered comedy, it transpires, is not embedded in Harvey's alter-ego, but swirls all around him as he attempts to hold it back like the tone-deaf, out-of-condition superhero he is.

Andrew Collins on his radio comedy Mr Blue Sky

RT's film editor opens up about the series he hopes will get families gathering around the wireless again.